For the fly fisherman interested in wild trout streams, GIS tools eliminate much of the guesswork involved in exploring a new stream.

Above:  A detailed GIS dataset being viewed in Google Earth.  This happens to provide critical habitat about California steelhead.  It is only one of dozens of datasets you can download from this site.

Instead of mucking about on the ground, getting frustrated and lost, you can do the initial leg-work from your computer. With a little experience in interpreting the aerial imagery, and adding in additional information you can garner from a host of sources, you can make highly informed decisions about whether you want to explore a stream further. You can also find the most likely access points, and figure out your route to get there.

Our emphasis here is to create awareness about tools which are particularly useful to fishermen seeking wild trout.  Many of these tools are extremely powerful, with huge databases sitting behind them.  Pretty much all are free, if you know where to find them.

• Topographic Maps and "The National Map" - USGS, the publisher of US topo maps, has been investing heavily in web resources and the "National Map", a web viewer that displays most of the information that conventionally one could only find on topo maps.  The National Map will, in fact, display scanned topo maps in different resolutions, combined with extremely good indexing functions.  Essential.
• Google Earth - an amazing tool in its own right, Google Earth is a free web application that provides a global database of aerial imagery, and allows you to "fly" anywhere in the world and view it in 3-D.  Increasingly the web viewer of choice for GIS data.  We also provide a detailed tutorial on how to set up your own "wild trout workstation" using Google Earth and datasets we've provided on this site.
• Google Maps - the slickest web mapping site is also a great tool that integrates tightly with Google Earth.
• GIS Data - If you're willing to invest the time and effort, an enormous amount of pertinent data is available in virtually every state in the form of GIS databases which are freely exchanged over the internet.  You can create an unbelievably powerful online mapping tool for yourself.